That the life and writings of such a man should have awakened in his breast something of hero-worship[274] is, therefore, not surprising. That he should have singled out these passages, and taken the trouble to translate them, is some proof that he admired Pico’s practical piety more than his Neo-Platonic speculations; that he shared with Colet those yearnings for practical Christian reform with which Colet had returned from Italy ten years before. That a few years after this translation should be published and issued in English in More’s name was further proof of it. For here was a book not only in its drift and spirit boldly taking Cole’s side against the Schoolmen, and in favour of the study of Scripture and the Oriental languages, but as boldly holding up Savonarola as ‘a preacher, as well in cunning as in holiness of living, most famous,’—‘a holy man’—‘a man of God’[275]—in the teeth of the fact that he had been denounced by the Pope as a ‘son of blasphemy and perdition,’ excommunicated, tortured, and, refusing to abjure, hung and burned as a heretic![276]
Colet’s influence on More.
And if the fire of hero-worship for Pico had lit up something of heroism in More’s heart—something which yearned for the battle of life, and not for the rest of the cloister—so the living example of Colet was ready to feed the flame into strength and steadiness.
More marries under Colet’s advice.
The result was that, in 1505,[277] in spite of early disappointments, and, it is said, under Colet’s ‘advice and direction,’[278] More married Jane Colt, of New Hall in Essex, took a house in Bucklersbury, and gave up for ever all longings for monastic life.
V. HOW IT HAD FARED WITH ERASMUS (1500-5).
Soon after Colet’s elevation to the dignities of Doctor and Dean, a letter of congratulation arrived from Erasmus.
Colet had written no letter to him, and had almost lost sight of him during these years. It would seem that, after his departure from Oxford, Colet had given up all hopes of his aid. Nor had any other kindred soul risen up to take that place in fellow-work beside him, which at one time he had hoped the great scholar might have filled.
Erasmus had not forgotten Colet.
The legal robbery of Erasmus at Dover.
But Erasmus on his side had not forgotten Colet. His intercourse with Colet at Oxford had changed the current of his thoughts, and the course of his life. Colet little knew by what slow and painful steps he had been preparing to redeem the promise he had made on leaving Oxford.